I'm a total newbie when it comes to the Foundry, but I'm having fun playing around.

I wanted to make a simple encounter where a ship warps in when you reach a trigger. I set a reach marker and made the ship trigger on component reach. I added the "Warp in - Federation" idle animation and give it a duration of 100. The ship appears as expected, but the warp-in animation just loops over and over, regardless of the animation duration.

The "warp-out" animation is affected by the duration slider, such that the ship warps out and stays warped out for the specified duration.

Is this a bug, or am I just abusing animations? Is there a better way to get a ship to warp in?

I'm a total newbie when it comes to the Foundry, but I'm having fun playing around.

I wanted to make a simple encounter where a ship warps in when you reach a trigger. I set a reach marker and made the ship trigger on component reach. I added the "Warp in - Federation" idle animation and give it a duration of 100. The ship appears as expected, but the warp-in animation just loops over and over, regardless of the animation duration.

The "warp-out" animation is affected by the duration slider, such that the ship warps out and stays warped out for the specified duration.

Is this a bug, or am I just abusing animations? Is there a better way to get a ship to warp in?

Thanks.

Hmmm... this could be a bug. I've seen quite a few other animations that don't seem to be affected by the duration slider.

at the moment i do not believe there is a way to have a ship warp in and stay warped in, unless you have the ship warp in within 10k of the player and then they will automatically start to fight, ending the animation.

the idle animation is something that is designed to loop over and over but i have noticed that changing the slider does not seem to have any effect on the time between the loop. that might be a bug.

To me it sounds like he is saying that the warp 'animation' is bugged and is looping instead of stopping once the ship is done warping in.. Maybe I am mis understanding, but I know NPC ships can and do warp into missions all the time and it does not 'loop' that way.

The duration of something is not the duration of the animation. Animations are a predefined length. Duration refers to the length of time an actor will stay in whatever behavior he's in.

I've covered this elsewhere before, so you can maybe find more info there. And I know AStarSearcher put up a rather detailed post explaining behaviors in futher detail.

Please don't take this as a nerdrage, but I'm at my wits ends here.

First,

it is very frustrating how you guys are naming a few things. Fail is not fail. Duration in an animation is not the duration of an animation. Wander distance is not the distance of a wander but the distance allowed away from the spawn point.

It would really, really help us if the devs could please name the functions according to what they actually do, or at the very least, please include an info popup that explains what a slider is intended to be used for, kind of like with the object descriptions.

Second,

As is stands, there are so many animations that serve no function at all, like the warp in. If you believe that it's functioning as intended, then none of us realize how it was intended to be used. Why? Because the looping makes no sense.

Why would I use a warp in animation if it loops? My ship or another ship warps in, and seconds later, the ship warps in again. It's not useful as an animation under any scenario.

Scenario A: Use it as an idle animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario B: Use it as a chat animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario C: Use it as a personal ship animation when interacting with an object? No, that makes no sense.

What else is left here?

This is not an isolated instance. There are a dozen object interactions in space that are entirely worthless becasue they loop. Except for 1 or 2 animations, most of the space ones just make no sense. The ONLY animations that have any use in space are the sensor sweep and the ship shock one. The rest are pointless and unusable.

It really does seem like someone was like, "Hey, we have these stock animations. Let's throw them into it and not pay attention to how they are meant to be used. Kind of like the fact that we have 8 Fed walls with different colored doors and not a single regular corridor wall. Someone threw in the candy with no idea of how authors might need to use different pieces together. It's like the left hand of the art (or whoever) team doesn't coordinate well with the right hand of the other team that is designing how we use these assets and animations, or vice versa.

This is extremely frustrating.

Can someone please tell us how we are supposed to use these animations?

What exactly can we do with the warp in animation?

The same question applies to most of the space animations like Q flash in or the ground beam in animations.

Please tell us what we're supposed to do with these assets, because if they are working as intended, then no one intended us to use them at all. If you didn't plan for us to use them as logic would dictate, then why include them at all? Please tell me what I can do with the warp in animation.

If the answer is nothing, then it reflects a serious lack of coordination between the functions and options.

it is very frustrating how you guys are naming a few things. Fail is not fail. Duration in an animation is not the duration of an animation. Wander distance is not the distance of a wander but the distance allowed away from the spawn point.

It would really, really help us if the devs could please name the functions according to what they actually do, or at the very least, please include an info popup that explains what a slider is intended to be used for, kind of like with the object descriptions.

Second,

As is stands, there are so many animations that serve no function at all, like the beam in.

Why would I use it if it loops?

Scenario A: Use it as an idle animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario B: Use it as a chat animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario C: Use it as an personal ship animation when interacting with an object? No, that makes no sense.

What else is left here?

This is not an isolated instance. There are a dozen object interactions in space that are entirely worthless becasue they loop. Except for 1 or 2 animations, most of the space ones just make no sense.

This is extremely frustrating. Can someone please tell us how we are supposed to use these animations?

In what circumstance would I decloak my uncloaked ship?

In what instance would I use a q flash in animation for a space object that is already there?

What exactly can we do with the warp in animation?

Please tell us what we're supposed to do. If the devs cannot, then it's a serious lack of coordination between the functions and options.

Please tell us what we're supposed to do with these assets, because if they are working as intended, then no one intended us to use them at all. If you didn't plan for us to use them as logic would dictate, then why include them at all? Please tell me what I can do with the warp in animation.

To me, this is a classic case of an IDE that is incrementally developed, over a lengthy period of time. This of course means that as the tool is developed some of the assets may be unusable because the tool-set doesn't expose to us the extra coding available to Cryptic's content-designers when they use the same asset.

Whether Cryptic intends to give us more programmatic access to the assets or plans to remake the assets so they'd be more useful to us in our limited tool-set, I do not know. The only thing we can do is point out our wants and needs and wait.

it is very frustrating how you guys are naming a few things. Fail is not fail. Duration in an animation is not the duration of an animation. Wander distance is not the distance of a wander but the distance allowed away from the spawn point.

It would really, really help us if the devs could please name the functions according to what they actually do, or at the very least, please include an info popup that explains what a slider is intended to be used for, kind of like with the object descriptions.

Second,

As is stands, there are so many animations that serve no function at all, like the warp in. If you believe that it's functioning as intended, then none of us realize how it was intended to be used. Why? Because the looping makes no sense.

Why would I use a warp in animation if it loops? My ship or another ship warps in, and seconds later, the ship warps in again. It's not useful as an animation under any scenario.

Scenario A: Use it as an idle animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario B: Use it as a chat animation? No, it instantly reappears after it disappears. I can't use it.

Scenario C: Use it as a personal ship animation when interacting with an object? No, that makes no sense.

What else is left here?

This is not an isolated instance. There are a dozen object interactions in space that are entirely worthless becasue they loop. Except for 1 or 2 animations, most of the space ones just make no sense. The ONLY animations that have any use in space are the sensor sweep and the ship shock one. The rest are pointless and unusable.

It really does seem like someone was like, "Hey, we have these stock animations. Let's throw them into it and not pay attention to how they are meant to be used. Kind of like the fact that we have 8 Fed walls with different colored doors and not a single regular corridor wall. Someone threw in the candy with no idea of how authors might need to use different pieces together. It's like the left hand of the art (or whoever) team doesn't coordinate well with the right hand of the other team that is designing how we use these assets and animations, or vice versa.

This is extremely frustrating.

Can someone please tell us how we are supposed to use these animations?

What exactly can we do with the warp in animation?

The same question applies to most of the space animations like Q flash in or the ground beam in animations.

Please tell us what we're supposed to do with these assets, because if they are working as intended, then no one intended us to use them at all. If you didn't plan for us to use them as logic would dictate, then why include them at all? Please tell me what I can do with the warp in animation.

If the answer is nothing, then it reflects a serious lack of coordination between the functions and options.

*rant off.

Excellent rant.

I don't know why this thread has ground to a halt as it has. Honestly, this Warp In/Warp Out has ground one of the climaxes of my mission to a dead halt.

I believe this goes for many other authors. How many of you have tried to do a warp in of allied ships to tackle a seemingly imposing fleet in a sudden turning of the tables?

I'll continue the mission without the awesome warp effect, but it's really hit my enthusiasm to finish my work. I keep seeing this same sort of problem over and over again. I can't even make them warp out, because they keep warping out over and over again.